From Medicine to Movies and Back. Dr Tom Shannon will aim to take his audience on a short but highly visual journey into the world of blockbuster movies, pop videos and advertisements populated by amazing creatures, animated characters and imaginary environments. Tom will briefly describe the techniques used to capture human motion and how to place animated characters and objects into real backgrounds. He will demonstrate how the same techniques are used to benefit thousands of disabled children each year, improving sporting performance and even capturing the gait of kangaroos.

Dr Tom Shannon is a chartered professional engineer with over 30 years of international, commercial experience as a practising engineer, medical physicist and computer scientist with a focus on clinical and machine vision applications applied to the analysis of human motion and shape. Tom is a co-founder of the Oxford Metrics Group plc headquartered in Oxford, and a Director of Vicon Motion Systems located in Oxford and Denver. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, College of Biomedical Engineering, of the Royal Society of Medicine and of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Tom is also a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Staffordshire University, researching the application of vision science to the measurement of cosmetic defect and physical capability among children diagnosed with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis. In his spare time Tom is a sheep and cattle farmer in Somerset, UK.